


Between the Lines

by chantefable



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: 1940s, 1960s, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Timeline, Cold War, Gen, Genetically Engineered Beings, Multi, Soviet Union, Spies & Secret Agents, Super Soldier Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:52:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>According to the intelligence available to the CIA, the KGB made Illya Kuryakin the way he is - an omega with alpha traits, able to rip anyone apart.</p><p>Napoleon has read quite a lot between the lines of his file.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Lines

Some things are just unnatural, you know. Like caviar burgers. Or wearing _that_ Dior with _that_ Rabanne. 

Or the CIA teaming up with the KGB.

Or the kind of morally questionable genetic engineering it turns out they've been practicing in the USSR. 

Napoleon Solo has read Kuryakin's file, and he has read between the lines. He may be a thieving thief who was not too squeamish to drag Algardi and Pauwels through the gore and sell them to the highest bidder while wearing the uniform, a thief who was just cocky enough to get high on the thrill and to get caught. But for all that both he and Saunders play pretend, they both know that Napoleon is smarter than both of them are willing to formally acknowledge: Napoleon for selfish reasons of self-preservation, and Saunders for boring reasons of hierarchy and discipline. But he's the trick: Napoleon _is_ a major asset, and that's because he knows things.

Things that are useful to know, things that are good to know in their filthy line of work, and things that people don't claim to know out loud right now, at least not in the US, with the anti-communist witch hunt rising like a tide. The red scare is everywhere, the system being shaken out for 'traitors' from the ground up, and even in the CIA, it won't do to appear too knowledgeable about the enemy. The walls have ears and Napoleon likes his hide whole.

But he knows things. He's good.

So Napoleon has read quite a lot into Kuryakin's file, and he can imagine it vividly. He does a quick mental check: Kuryakin's father's crime, the circumstances and the year, the corresponding articles of the penal code, matches it all against Kuryakin's biography. Facts do not compute. There's exile in the province but there's also the mother. There's property confiscation but there's also the mysterious reappearance of the exact same Moscow apartment as his official domicile years later and these things simply do not happen. There's a series of macabre institutions hiding behind poorly translated acronyms, and while someone else might have wondered what this strange hydra dominating Kuryakin's adolescence was supposed to be, one head an orphanage, another a school, then hospital, mental hospital, vocational school, what fresh hell is this – Napoleon has it figured out. It's all right there. The mother, living in the same town, and not serving a shorter sentence in the gulags.

Therefore, go figure the sum total of two and two. The mother waded through hell and high water and fought out a place in a super secret government program for her boy. A chance for her, a chance for him: they'd have turned a blind eye on a lot if she gave them her son's life to play with. Must have been an amazing woman. Napoleon can only imagine the favors involved and the risk, essentially begging to have someone hurt your child. Wonder what did they do to him, needles, electroshock, drugs, training? 

Doesn't matter now, does it. Here he is now, the impossibly tall hormonal wonder that Napoleon needs on this mission like a bullet to the gut. Here he is, living and breathing and screaming. Full agent out and about, off to taste the world on the other side of the Iron Curtain. And that other fork in the road, it had years of exile and state care, didn't it. No living in the capital, doors closed, education and job opportunities limited. Beloved mother probably in an early grave, too. 

Napoleon, he knows these things. He's been doing a very nasty job for a very long time, and there's more to survival than having a cheeky snarl and a big knot. You want to live through an extended battle where everyone fights dirty, you have to learn how the others on the prowl live and think. Napoleon keeps his cards close to his chest, but he knows the way things work both sides of the wall.

Kuryakin's mother must have been a remarkable woman. Drugs and tests, doctors and teachers, all of it with a distinct resemblance to a prison, probably, but – could have worked and did. There he is, a living miracle, sulking on the couch and holding a palmful of Napoleon's too-big trackers, made in USA. His meaty ass is soaking the satin of the hotel furniture with one kind of pheromones, while the glands behind his ears are pumping out something completely different. He is staring at their East German third wheel like she hung the moon, and visibly suppressing a pleased shiver when the mischievous beta snaps at him, giving him her coldness like a treat and prodding him with the yoke.

Napoleon smirks, remembering the psychological profile from the file. Oedipal complex. If that's what you want to call it. Sure thing, seen that coming from a mile away. He thinks of the ruthless brilliance and daring, of the kind of love it took for that sort of sacrifice. Amazing. Damn, if Napoleon ever met Kuryakin's mother, he'd sure try hard for a chance with a woman like that.

Napoleon doesn't even have to use the bottom of his whiskey tumbler as a crystal ball to easily see it with his mind's eye: Kuryakin as a fair-haired, coltish omega boy, playing chess, spending summers at a dacha for government officials. And then the truth comes out and the world is cracked in two, before and after. Who wouldn't take a gamble to give their only offspring a chance to have the best possible life in the system, even if it meant experimental treatments and serums that make biology go haywire? Unnatural, sure. But even as a childless lone alpha, Napoleon can understand the impulse and the logic behind such a gamble. The winner takes it all. And as a long-time burglar and a long-ago marauder, Napoleon can certainly understand the personal stakes, too, the life, safety and relative comfort of Kuryakin's mother bartered for with the boy's body. 

The winner takes it all.

Obviously, Kuryakin's usefulness brought long-term dividends. Napoleon has seen him in action and he's good, very good at some things, but hardly KGB's best. More like, best of the alpha-omega litter. So, he took well to the genetic experiments, and was rewarded accordingly. Lifted from the medical gutter, dragged back to Moscow from the periphery, allowed to rise through the ranks of the special operatives. Accepted for foreign assignments: a privilege.

And really, it's not like Napoleon will entertain for a moment that Kuryakin learned about the degenerate Western fashion by the likes of Christian Dior and Paco Rabanne in a part-time class at a textile technical college somewhere. No, the answer lies on the surface, begging to be picked up like a spare key to a safe, no cracking necessary: it's the closed access shops for the party elite and the secret missions to Paris and Milan, where Kuryakin must have strived to get into, evidently with success, all to treat his dearest mother with the best of the best. 

Aggressively nurturing and obsessively loving behavior, well in line with his manufactured half-alpha, half-omega self. But really, why shouldn't he, when it's because of his mother's wits and guts that Kuryakin got this far? She gave him the ticket into the sunny future, and alpha strength and speed into the bargain.

What do they call it over there? _Putyovka v zhizn'._

Napoleon takes off his suit jacket, hangs it up and settles for a nap in the rigid armchair, separated from the non-conformist mating dance on the other side of the room by several feet of excellent woolen carpet. He closes his eyes and focuses on the faint smell of alcohol on his own breath and the stale alpha sweat wafting from his armpits. He will need to change into a fresh shirt afterwards.

There's music, and chess pieces clacking against the board.

Who knows what they thought they would be getting, screwing with the physiology any which way: a two-in-one honeypot? a robotic soldier above the natural urges of alpha and omega alike? Clearly, they missed on both accounts, but government agencies are thrifty. The CIA didn't let a thief of Napoleon's caliber rot in prison lest his talents might spoil, and the KGB obviously found plenty of ways to use their cutting edge hormonal wonder, even if they had to go off-script.

Because there he is, alive and well, larger than life and healthier than a bull. Doe-eyed and heavy-footed Illya Kuryakin, the Red Peril that Napoleon has to match his strides to for the duration of the Italian job. All thanks to the mysterious Mrs Kuryakina who's been mostly edited out of the papers the CIA got hold of, but of whom Napoleon has managed to read plenty between the lines of the meager dossier and in Kuryakin's own gentle, hungry blue eyes.

Must have been an amazing woman, Napoleon thinks, wondering lazily if Kuryakin's mother was an alpha or an omega, or a beta, before slipping into an uneasy sleep. His dreams are a bright kaleidoscope of eerie images brought on by the cacophony of pheromones in the hotel suite. He keeps seeing a face that is attractive and smudged, as if shot through a soft lens, and a body that is large and heavy enough to pin him down, charging at Napoleon at breakneck speed.

It's a strangely good dream.


End file.
